Chapter 8C

She indulged in her cigarette. She said, her voice throaty, conspiratorial, "This is beginning to feel very naughty."

"All those people driving by," I said, joining in her mood, "not knowing we're nekkid."

"Yeah," she breathed, pleased. She took another puff. "After today, you'll have to go to confession."

"I don't go to confession. I just pretend I do."

"Don't you feel strange about that?"

"A little. But it's what I have to do."

"It's a sin," she said, testing me.

"Only for everyone else."

"This... is a sin," she announced, a little amused. She reached over to the ashtray and slowly, carefully, mashed the cigarette several times against the glass until it was completely extinguished. "It's the major, most unacceptable, most outrageous... most delicious sin."

"Can I have one of those?" I asked mischievously.

"One of what?" she asked, settling against the headboard.

"One of those," I said, motioning my head at the ash tray.

"Don't you dare. It's an awful habit. One of my few vices. I'm not lazy, I'm not narrow minded, I'm not hateful. I don't rob anyone, I don't kill anyone, I don't hate anyone. I'm not a racist, not a bigot. But I do smoke. And I'm a hypocrite. And deep inside, I'm ruthless."

I asked, surprised, thinking she was joking, "You are?"

"Yes. I am. I have such a sweet, innocent, kitten-like look. Mr. Buchanan thinks that Evelyn and I are both virgins. Saints. But Evelyn fucks. And I fuck." She looked at me, expressionless, studying me.

Under her oddly unsmiling look, I gave an embarrassed laugh. "That's not so sinful."

"Oh, it is. It's a sin because I like it so much. You can't like something that much without it being a sin. It's so difficult to let someone else know how much I like it. It's so good with you, but even with you sometimes... I get a little scared of myself, it's so good and so... unexpected. Sometimes, hon, it's so much of a strain on me. Really. It's not always so easy to let you know that about me. I am a terrible sinner when I'm nekkid with you."

"Really? After all we've done?"

"Yes." She suddenly and playfully hid her eyes with one hand. "Oh, I can't believe this. Why am I so embarrassed? It's like telling you about my time of the month. It's so silly."

I paused. "Is that the secret that you wanted to tell me about? That you think this is a sin?"

"No, hon, no. My big secret is something else, and I can't tell you that now." She uncovered her eyes and with a coy smile she leaned her head on her knees, smiling at me indulgently. "But I will tell you one day, don't worry."

"Okay," I said, disappointed.

"Do you think this is a sin?"

"Yes. Sort of."

"Sort of?"

"Well... only because everyone else says it is."

"Yes... I know what you mean."

She dropped into deep thought for a moment. She rubbed her leg and then her voice shrank into that of a hesitant little girl.

"Hon... do you like sinning with me?"

"Yes. That makes me as big a sinner as you are."

"Then there's no hope for us," she said, grinning slyly and lowering her legs, stretching out and lying naked and open. "Sin with me," she crooned. "Lick me."

As I moved over her and bent to kiss her firm inner thighs she looked down. Fastidiously, she brushed her pubic curls aside and gently parted her cuntlips for me. "Lick me, hon."

Gradually she became almost uncontrollably licentious, whispering and rasping lewdly and with an abandon I still had trouble getting accustomed to. I have no idea what incited this effusion of raw lust; I could only guess that, like me, she was grasping at something that would soon end. She seemed to have somehow reached back to her sixteenth or seventeenth years, when it was all new and unimpaired by change or necessity. I realized that I was not the only one in that room who felt afraid and threatened.

As I mouthed her cunt she moved my body around so that my knees straddled her head and my cock fit easily into her mouth. She sucked me slowly, lecherously, her hips jerking now and then when I sucked her clit. Soon I was near orgasm, so I rose and stretched over her, entered deeply, and fucked in slow, deep strokes, trying to hold back for her. Her head raised and resting against the headboard, she grinned impudently and whispered, "You're so good with your mouth. I'm almost ready to cum," and I grinned back and said, "Me too, : and she grinned back again and whispered, "Then cum in me." And I said, getting breathless, "You first," and she shook her head and said, "Cum in me," and I shook my head no and slowed down and kept fucking and then her eyes began to dim and within a few seconds she she stiffened and climaxed, wrenching her head back and to one side. She finished with a lurch of her hips, gasping and sighing, "Fuck... oh, fuck." Then I started spurting and she quickly reached between us to touch my shaft and feel the spurts hurtling into her. She watched with salacious glee while I finished cumming.

We napped, waking in mid afternoon. Whispering sultrily she leaned over me and quickly jerked me off, entreating me as I came, "C'mon, hon. C'mon. Ah. Those hot little squirts. Yes." We rested again and then drove to the Howard Johnson's down the street and ate like cave people, giggling and spilling things. Martha would grin and say something stupid like "Pass me the salt, hon -- " and then lean close to me over the table and whisper laughingly, "-- and squirt on my tits!" We squealed and sniggered and I would reply with something like "Cum on my ear," which threw her into a squirming fit. She said, "Mr. Buchanan would have a stroke. Ha-ha, even Evelyn would have a stroke! The walls of the First Presbyterian Church of Memphis would come tumblin' down, and the doors of the temple would be rent asunder."

We returned to the room. Dusk found us sinning and lusting like animals, me licking her slowly, her spread thighs taut and trembling as I made her cum, and then we fucked and I made her cum again, then again. Each orgasm for her was deeper, harder, more paralyzing than the one before. Each time she would clench my shoulders and with her lips near my ear she would moan, "Again. Again, Steven. Fuck me. Fuck." Until, finally, her fourth cum was a long pleasure drenched struggle, and when it arrived I felt my own orgasm creep arduously from my strained back and into the tip of my cock. I slowed, my knees getting tired, a small, sore streak stinging near my cock's root, but her cunt swiveled around me and she hissed "Yes!" and I couldn't stop. While I came she held me close, my face against hers, her nails digging into my shoulders while her clinging cunt greedily sucked the last hot jets from my balls. I yelled into her shoulder, and then groaned, straining on quaking knees, and her belly writhed against mine, and she seemed to cling desperately to our pleasure in this last, prolonged, exhausting, excruciating release.

For almost an hour afterward, we held each other silently. I lay on her for a while, then rolled over and lay with her head on my shoulder. Soon we changed positions again, me lying on her breast before we curled up spoon-style. At one point she sat up, leaned back against her pillow, and lit a cigarette. I watched her inhale and then slowly exhale.

After a moment she whispered, "Steven."

I looked at her and waited.

She paused and took another puff. She shook her head no, once. She whispered, "Nothing."

Finally, it was time to dress and leave.

She drove me back to my Mama Rose's house. We arrived at eleven, an hour after the Tremont had closed.

"You be good to your Grandma Rose," Martha told me from her car window. "she's so sweet."

"I'll come to Union Station next Saturday and see you off."

"You don't have to," she said quietly. "You sure?"

"I'll be there," I said, winking -- not knowing if I were really up to it, but letting her think I believed I was.

She winked back. Unsmiling, she stepped on the gas. She and the car raced down the street and grew smaller. I stood on the curb and watched, wondering what the hell I was going to do.

Of all the weeks Martha and I had spent apart, that week of waiting for her departure was the longest that I remember. The only memory I have of that week was of standing in our front yard one sultry afternoon with the cloying humidity hanging in the air as I stared into the vast suburban sameness around me. As in an underexposed, bleached-out still photograph, nothing seemed distinct. Nothing moved. But I felt the earth move; and I felt time move, slowly and relentlessly.

During breakfast Friday morning my mother told me, "This coming weekend will be the last week for you to have nothing to do while school's out. Your daddy wants you to work at the grocery during the week, starting Monday."

"You have to learn the value of a dollar," my stepdad grunted as he came to the table for his coffee. He took a quick sip and then bent over to tie his shoes. "Learn about runnin' a business," he went on. "Sackin' groceries. Trim the produce. Then we'll get you on the big bikes with the delivery crew, and you can make some money. Ten cents for every order you deliver in the Lauderdale Courts. The work ain't that hard, but it'll help put some muscle on you, get you out in the sunshine and the open air."

I mentioned that a new play was going to start soon at St. Michael's and that I had been assigned a role. I would have to leave the store by five to get a bus in time for rehearsals.